Our first stop of the day was to the lovely home of Reverend Peter Storey. Reverend Storey and his wife Elizabeth may actually be the NICEST couple in South Africa. They happily welcomed all 11 of us into their adorable home, and served the yummiest buttered scones I’ve ever had in my life. After we spent a few minutes admiring their beautiful house, we sat down to listen to Reverend Storey discuss various aspects of his life, ranging from his roles in fighting apartheid to what he knows in life to be absolutely true (courtesy of Lauren’s random but enticing question). Embarrassingly enough, I did nod off during some of Rev. Storey’s talk. I could kick myself in the face for it, but I honestly can’t help it when I start falling asleep at the most unfortunate times. He called me out on it at our lunch later, but in the nicest way possible. He also proceeded to tell me that he had been falling asleep at the World Economic Forum, so now I am even more fond of this man. (Note: He was falling asleep at the global meeting I protested last week, how great is that?) Our time with the Storeys was more reflective than anything. As lazy as this sounds, there are only so many academic conversations about history and policy that I can handle before I definitely start zoning out. But Rev. Storey conveys to others his missions (in a non-religious sense) with such a deep understanding of what it means to be truly passionate about something that you can’t help but admire him. It makes me wonder (and hope) if I’ll ever consider something so important to me that I’ll choose to dedicate my life to it.
The rest of our day is where the active adventures took place. After we said good-bye to the Storeys at lunch, we walked to…wait for it…a penguin colony! It was so exciting. Except I was shocked about something. As dumb as this sounds, I completely expected these little guys to be in snow or at least in the distance on snow. Of course that makes zero to none sense. There is no snow on the beaches of South Africa, I do realize that. But I just immediately associated
penguins with snow and was so thrown off to see them in muddy bushes. We were all so excited and took way too many pictures of them. The little boardwalk and park area are made so that you can walk right up to the penguins to take pictures. I wouldn’t recommend trying to catch or pet one because those critters can bite your finger off with their beaks. Pictures definitely sufficed. In the area with the penguins, you can climb over these massive rocks to be standing above the ocean. Our entire group climbed up there, in our rainboots and raincoats, and started singing and posing and taking random pictures for God only knows how long. We can keep ourselves entertained forever, I swear. This is when I wish I could post video clips and pics so that I could show you how ridiculous we were being.
When Bill and Karlyn finally called us down from our ocean-rock-stage, we all packed back into the bus for the drive to the Cape of Good Hope. This was the first time I really felt like I was even close to being in Africa. While we were driving, we say an ostrich in the reserve, and on the way back guess what we saw??? Baboons!!! I was ecstatic beyond belief. This whole trip everyone else has had part of their major at Duke come alive through history or policy or politics or whatever. But this time, my primates finally made their appearance into my life. Unfortunately, the poor animals are about to go extinct and the ones in the reserve are so accustomed to humans and their food that they are in even more danger of dying out, but it was still awesome to see them. We climbed up to the lighthouse at the Cape which looks over an amazing view of the ocean. This part of the world is really breathtaking. It almost feels like we’re actually at the bottom of the globe and that looking out you could maybe but not really see the South Pole if you squinted hard enough. Such a beautiful country with a horrendously ugly past. On the way home, I passed out on Anthony, literally until we got back to the hotel. I was exhausted after jumping on rocks and climbing a little mountain all day. But not too tired to go out at night of course. Julian, Anthony, and I were the only ones up for going out, so we made our way to Joburg and Pretoria, two semi-sketchy places on Long Street. Note: I went out in a long sleeve t-shirt and tennis shoes. But it's all good because I'm pretty sure that I'm the only female in the whole place that came in with two guys :) Life is good.
Welcome to South Africa ladies and gents: Spend the morning reflecting on history, the afternoon appreciating the torn country's beauty, and the evening partying it all away. Kind of sounds like Lebanon actually...
Ukuthula,
Lynn
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